Contemporary East European Research Articles

Challenges and promises of comparative research into post-Soviet fascism: Methodological and conceptual issues in the study of the contemporary East European extreme right

The international study of fascism has, over the last 25 years, experienced considerable consolidation. Inspired by influential theoretical publications of Roger D. Griffin and others, a new sub-discipline, “comparative fascist studies,” has emerged that proceeds from a largely common conceptualization of fascism. It explicitly includes and particularly promotes the cross-cultural, as well as inter-epochal investigation into ultra-nationalisms outside Central and Western Europe after the year 1945. The concepts, approaches and hypotheses of this new sub-discipline are well-suited to be applied to the study of inter-war and post-Soviet right-wing radicalism in Eastern Europe. However, before comprehensive classification and informative comparison becomes possible, the putative fascist phenomena of Eastern Europe need more thorough descriptive analysis, field research, and empirical investigation by researchers, in the region.

The Tableau Vivant as a “Figure of Return” in Contemporary East European Cinema

Abstract The paper analyses the re-conceptualization of the intermedial trope of the tableau vivant in recent East European cinema through several examples from Hungarian and Russian films directed by György Pálfi, Kornél Mundruczó, Benedek Fliegauf, Béla Tarr, and Andrei Zvyagintsev. The tableau vivant in these films is not conceived primarily as an embodiment of a painting, the introduction of “the real into the image” (as Brigitte Peucker described), instead it appears more like the objectification of bodies as images, and something that we can associate with what Mario Perniola considers the “sex appeal of the inorganic” or “the Egyptian moment in art.” As such, the tableau becomes a powerful agent in generating metanarratives, offering a blueprint for a “big picture,” a comprehensive vision of the world (reinforced by recurring mythological themes like the genesis or the end of the world, the loss of Paradise, etc.). We may connect this feature of these tableaux vivants, therefore, to what Lyotard termed as the “figure of return,” and to the reconstructive tendencies of contemporary post-postmodern art.

Odette Keun (1888-1978) by Monique Reintjes (review)

742 SEER, 79, 4, 200I unprepossessing Siberian city of Omsk (sometimes jokingly deciphered as Otdalennoe mestossyl'nykh i katorzhnykh, p. 20). Kicking off from Anna Wierzbicka 's statement that 'Soulcan always be translated into Russian as dusha, while the reverseis not true' (p. ix), Pesmen uses her trainingin anthropology and ethnography as well as her good (if not perfect) command of Russian to investigate some of the superficialand some of the deep manifestationsof the souls of people in the RSFSR/RF in the I990s. This naturally requires an examination of the importance of the bania,blat,sitting together at table, drinking,exploiting loopholes in the Soviet 'system'(and post-Soviet bardak); singing, inter-strata relationships and, especially, byt.These analyses could have been edited into clearer English, but even where the meaning is somewhat opaque the general drift is always clarified by the numerous quotations from the cross-section of the Siberian population with whom Pesmen has chosen to spend a good deal of her life. During the last eighteen months your reviewer has himself done time in three areas of provincial Russia several hundred miles to the east, south and north of Moscow, and would liketo confirmthat most of the people he spoketo theresounded exactly like the inhabitants of Omsk. Nonetheless, Pesmen might disagree with my impressionthat the majorityof our conversationscould not conceivably have taken place with citizens of Europe (proper) or the USA (i.e. the Russian/ Eurasian soul is still verydifferentfrom the Western soul, however defined). My understandingof the interrelationshipbetween bytand dusha also appears to differ somewhat from Pesmen's. Struggling with the endless problems of Russian byttakes time away from nourishing one's own and other people's souls, but if (a very big if, of course) the daily grind was no longer such a burden would not Russians in general (like many of the notorious 'new Russians'in particular)forgetabout theirsoulsand become as boring and flat as many Westerners are said to be? Which is the greater threat to dusha,a multitudeor the virtualabsence of seriousand repellent bytovyeproblemy? This is a book for those who are capable of lateralthinkingand who realize that post-Soviet Russia is every bit as difficultfor foreignersto understandas was the Russia of the Soviet period. Department ofSlavonic Studies MARTIN DEWHIRST University ofGlasgou Reintjes, Monique. OdetteKeun (I888-I978). Privately published in The Netherlands.Availablefromm.reintjes@worldonline.nl.I58 pp. Illustrations . Index. Priceunknown. ODETTE KEUN is usually remembered as the mistress of H. G. Wells. Along with severalothers,she sharedWells'sbed after I924, untilbeing comprehensively ousted seven years later by Gorky's ex-mistress, Baroness Moura Budberg. Keun was, however, also a distinguished authoress who over her lifetime wrote more than twenty books, mostly autobiographical novels and travelogues. She was also a most vocal supporterof Wells'splans for a 'World Directorate' (paradoxically intended as a substitute for dictatorship), and, after the Second WorldWar, of a Union of Central Europe which would act REVIEWS 743 as a bufferbetween the ideological poles of capitalism and communism. She travelled extensively, from her birthplace in Constantinople via a novitiate in Franceand Italy, to Menshevik Georgia, the Soviet Union, North Africa and America, and thence to her final restingplace in Worthing, Sussex. Monique Reintjes has tracked Keun's career, almost literally, across Europe and beyond, and searched out all that survives of the written and oral evidence relatingto her biography, amoursand literaryactivity. Keun was a socialist and, after the title of one of her earliest novels, une femme moderne. She considered the hymen 'a nonsense', and made the heroines of her novels pay for their own meals (p. 22). She also had very little time for the Bolsheviks and was emphatically not a fellow traveller. As she herself wrote, the true condition of Soviet Russia, which she discovered in I921, 'brokeherheart'(p. 33).The presentworkdiscussesextensivelyKeun's travels in Georgia, both before and after the Red Army invasion, and, rathermore briefly,her forced sojournsin Sevastopol, Kharkov and Moscow in the early 1920s. It additionally recalls to scholarly attention the many vignettes, anecdotes and observations contained in Keun's several and now largely forgotten works on contemporary East European politics and society: most notably, MyAdventures inBolshevik Russia(I 923) andIntheLandoftheGolden...

Nobility, Land, and Service in Medieval Hungary by Martyn s> Rady (review)

REVIEWS 743 as a bufferbetween the ideological poles of capitalism and communism. She travelled extensively, from her birthplace in Constantinople via a novitiate in Franceand Italy, to Menshevik Georgia, the Soviet Union, North Africa and America, and thence to her final restingplace in Worthing, Sussex. Monique Reintjes has tracked Keun's career, almost literally, across Europe and beyond, and searched out all that survives of the written and oral evidence relatingto her biography, amoursand literaryactivity. Keun was a socialist and, after the title of one of her earliest novels, une femme moderne. She considered the hymen 'a nonsense', and made the heroines of her novels pay for their own meals (p. 22). She also had very little time for the Bolsheviks and was emphatically not a fellow traveller. As she herself wrote, the true condition of Soviet Russia, which she discovered in I921, 'brokeherheart'(p. 33).The presentworkdiscussesextensivelyKeun's travels in Georgia, both before and after the Red Army invasion, and, rathermore briefly,her forced sojournsin Sevastopol, Kharkov and Moscow in the early 1920s. It additionally recalls to scholarly attention the many vignettes, anecdotes and observations contained in Keun's several and now largely forgotten works on contemporary East European politics and society: most notably, MyAdventures inBolshevik Russia(I 923) andIntheLandoftheGolden Fleece (1924). School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies MARTYNRADY University College London Rady, Martyn.Nobility,Land,andService inMedieval Hungary. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave, Basingstoke and New York, 2000. XV+ 23 I pp. Maps. Notes. Bibliography.Index. /45.??. IN this volume, Martyn Rady offers an account of land-holding and noble society in Hungary (extending to Slavonia, the Slovak Highlands, and Transylvania) from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Beginning with an account of the dynastic strugglesin Hungary which led to the house of Arpad coming to unquestioneddominance, Rady exploresand laysbare the intricate cat's-cradleof relationshipswhich knit the nobility together. His model is the structure of the royal household, and the officials udvarnik, ispan,and iobagiones castri-around whose activities the book revolves. The core of the study is on land-holding, and Rady's account of this is comprehensive and readable; he spends much time examining communal land-holding, and, in particular, the tension generated by complicated legislation affecting the devolution of estates on death, between escheat to the Crown, and the inheritance claims of direct male descendants, and collaterals. He also examines the institutionknown as 'the daughters'quarter' (pp. I03-07) and the subterfuges developed throughout the fourteenth century by which the practice evolved (as such are wont to do) despite the provision that the quarter was supposed to be paid in cash or kind into a means of permanently conveying estates, immunized from inheritance claims, to claughters. 744 SEER, 79, 4, 2001 Much more than the socio-legal dealings of the nobility fallswithin Rady's purview. This reviewerwas particularlyinterestedin his account of the role of the pristaldus,a sort of twelfth-century ad hocsheriff (p. 65), who was also expected, in remembering them, to function as 'a physical record of the proceedings', and the description(pp. 71-74) of the course of litigation viathe varioustypes of quasi-judicialinquisition. The scholarshipin this book is palpable and it is often put to excellent use. For instance, there are lucid and economic descriptions of the labyrinthine machinations underpinning the creation of land-power bases by particular individuals (e.g. p. 34), as well as the disastrouseffect of partible inheritance (e.g. p. 46). Perhaps,however, it shouldnot passwithoutnotice thattheweight of scholarship does occasionally impede the fluency of the argument: this reviewer could not but admire 'Pozsega, the name of which recalls the Slavonicword foran assart'(p. 8i), but thought itjust too good a line to throw away almost as an aside. The reader seeking the amplest exploitation of this interestingstudywould have been assistedby some easily-providedmodifications.It is a nuisance that the first-rate footnotes (sic) appear at the end. A glossary of technical expressionswould have closed some loopholes (e.g. zupan(p. 24) seems to go unexplained), and would have enabled the authoritativeform of some slightly unstable technical expressions, for instance, udvarnik/udvornik ('provider')to have been settled. The absence of a list of monarchs' dates is...

Post‐communist extremism in Eastern Europe: The nature of the phenomenon

The recent electoral gains of extreme right parties in many countries of Europe have made European citizens realise that the extreme right is not to be regarded exclusively as a fringe phenomenon but as a force that can penetrate mainstream democratic politics. The resilience and occasional rise of the radical right poses a serious challenge for social scientists and policy makers. Social scientists are called upon to examine the nature of the phenomenon, the factors conducive to the existence and resilience of the forces of extremism and the impact of far right political mobilisation within national societies and Europe, at large. Governments and policy makers for their part explore ways to marginalise these forces in order to sustain, in Western Europe‐ and consolidate, in Eastern Europe, democracy in the continent. But while there is ample analysis of the West European experience, there is an inadequate understanding of the conditions and circumstances that breed extreme right forces in Eastern Europe. In what follows, the paper will attempt to address the academic debate on the causes and nature of the contemporary East European extreme right. It will assess the relevance of a western oriented approach in the East European context. The article mostly refers to extremism in countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These countries are, by and large, functioning democracies, where extreme right parties compete in elections and in some of them are quite influential. All of these countries are applying to become members of the European Union, and this membership is subject to strict political criteria, requiring democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology

Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology

Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology

The largest anthology of its kind, Contemporary East European Poetry features 130 poets from ten countries and translated from fifteen languages, including Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, and Yiddish. Focusing on poetry from the 1960s and 1970s, poets both old and young, living and recently deceased, from many walks of life, both at home and in exile, contrasting religious and political persuasions, and practices ranging from traditional to the most up-to-date experimental modes, combine to form a disturbing though accurate profile of the twentieth century. Preference is given to the genuinely lyrical poems - to work that stresses the word and the poet's tools and craftmanship. This anthology gives the English speaking community a long overdue opportunity to experience the poetic art of East Europe that until now has been restricted due to the barriers of politics and language. The works have been expertly translated by 90 translators, at times in collaboration with the poet. Included, moreover, are introductions to each particular countries poetry, as well as a short biography of each poet.

Revolution in Poland

The bizarre ideological inversions which characterize the modes of expression of contemporary East European political movements serve to render invisible to the casual observer the real social character of these movements. For this reason alone most Western analyses of the recent events in Poland have conformed broadly to one of two stereotypes. First, there is the conventional wisdom of the right according to which the two primary forces in the present surge of revolt are nationalism and religion. Second, there is the semi-apologetic view favored by Social Democrats and Eurocommunists which sees the upheaval as a struggle for the democratization of socialism. Both analyses of course contain a germ of truth; but whereas from the first standpoint it is impossible (and perhaps undesirable) to see the real social forces which express themselves faute de mieux in the traditional language of reaction, the second standpoint begs the most fundamental question about the character of the existing regimes of Eastern Europe.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Retreat from Idealism: Reflections on Some Aspects of Contemporary East European Marxist Thought

The nature of Marxist doctrine is explained here by reference to the opposed tendencies of political idealism and political realism. These two can be detected in Marx's own writings, with idealism being dominant. The idealist tendency also prevailed in the official ideology of Leninism and Stalinism. The realist tendency, latent for a long period, is now being seen to emerge more clearly in the writings of many East European Marxists who accept the fundamental tenets of official Marxism yet show themselves critical of some of its aspects. Their realism is manifested in the belief that, first, the socialist order of society contains antagonisms which are in some respects similar to those of capitalism, and secondly that basic existential problems are incapable of a definitive solution even in conditions of communism. Some constructive political proposals, advocating the introduction of a kind of pluralism, are analysed here and commented on critically. Also some philosophical views which start out from the recognition that alienation is an enduring feature of socialist society receive critical evaluation; they are shown to be self-contradictory. The article concludes by arguing, first, that the dualistic state of Marxist doctrine in Eastern Europe is likely to persist there for some time to come, and secondly that Marxist idealism is an ideology inapplicable to post-capitalist conditions, including those of East European society.

Contemporary East European Historiography of Psychology

Contemporary East European Historiography of Psychology

Planning the City of Socialist Man

Abstract City planning in Eastern Europe is based on the philosophical tenets of Marxism-Leninism. It is hypothesized by Communist planners that socialism creates a unique urban pattern, one that is alien to capitalism. Structural uniformity, standardization, establishment of definitive limits to urban growth are postulated as falling within the operational scope of socialist planners. It is apparent that the contemporary East European city does not reflect socialist planning goals. The author describes socialist planning objectives, examines them in the light of existing urban reality, and postulates three categories of contemporary East European urban-types.